Fire and Ash is already #1 worldwide

2025 was a big year for science-fiction franchises. The Jurassic World movies roared back to life with Jurassic World: Rebirth, and two sci-fi-heavy superhero films — Superman and The Fantastic Four: First Steps — proved there’s still some interest in comic book movies. But those all paled in comparison to the biggest sci-fi blockbuster of the year, which just touched down on streaming this week.

James Cameron’s Avatar: Fire and Ash soared into theaters on December 19, 2025. It instantly went to number one at the box office and continued on to make nearly $1.5 billion. After the previous film, Avatar: The Way of Water, saw Jake (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) suffer the loss of their son, the third installment sees the grief-stricken family do battle with both humans and rival Na’vi tribes.

Fire and Ash finally landed on Disney Plus on June 24, and it’s no surprise that the biggest movie of 2025 is an instant streaming hit in 2026. The aliens vs. humans epic where you always root for the aliens to win is currently the most-watched movie on Disney’s streaming service, both in the U.S. and worldwide, according to third-party tracking site FlixPatrol.

Will there be an Avatar 4?

Recently, some have wondered if there’s still an appetite for a fourth and fifth Avatar film, as Cameron has said he has a five-movie plan. In more recent interviews, however, the filmmaker has hinted that he’d like to figure out a way to continue the franchise in a more efficient manner, since making each new Avatar installment is a huge endeavor that takes years of work and hundreds of millions of dollars (Fire and Ash reportedly cost $350 million to make).

“You know, I’ll be doing some writing. I’ve got a number of projects that I’m cooking,” Cameron told Variety. “And Avatar 4 and 5 are still floating out there. We’re going to be looking at some new technologies to try to do them more efficiently. Because they’re hideously expensive and take a long time. I want to do them in half the time for two-thirds of the cost. That’s my metric. And so it’s going to take us a year or so to figure out how to do that.”

Before that, however, Cameron promised that even if we don’t get a any more installments, he won’t keep his planned ending a secret.

“I don’t know if the saga goes beyond this point. I hope it does,” he told Entertainment Weekly in December 2025. “But, you know, we prove that business case every time we go out… If we don’t get to make 4 and 5, for whatever reason, I’ll hold a press conference, and I’ll tell you what we were gonna do. How’s that?”